Pope Leo XIV releases Magnifica Humanitas: 42,300-word AI encyclical warns of private power concentration, labor displacement, autonomous weapons
Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas Monday, a 42,300-word AI encyclical. It warns of power concentrated in private transnational firms, labor displacement, and autonomous weapons making war more feasible. Presented with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah. Source: Vatican
Pope Leo XIV on Monday released Magnifica Humanitas, the first major theological document of his papacy and a sweeping 42,300-word encyclical on artificial intelligence. He signed it on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, the foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching. The document argues that AI's main drivers are private, often transnational parties whose resources and ability to act surpass those of many governments. Leo describes the data labelers and content reviewers who train AI as exposed to disturbing material under demanding conditions for minimal wages, and references the harsh conditions of workers extracting rare-earth elements for AI hardware. The text says technology is not antagonistic to humanity, but it is not neutral either: it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. It pushes back on autonomous weapons systems, saying their growing ease of deployment makes war more feasible and less subject to human control. Leo presented the encyclical alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, who said large-scale human labor displacement was a real possibility and that supporting displaced workers would be a moral imperative of historic proportions. Sources: vatican.va, CNN, Time, National Catholic Reporter.